There have been circulated hardcoat films each including a substrate (base) and, on one or both sides of the substrate, a hardcoat layer having a surface pencil hardness of about 3H. The hardcoat layers in the hardcoat films are formed from materials selected mainly from UV-curable acrylic monomers (see, for example, Patent Literature (PTL) 1). For higher surface pencil hardness of the hardcoat layers, some hardcoat layers further include nanoparticles.
In contrast, glass is known as a material having extremely high surface hardness. Among such glass, there is known glass that has been subjected to an alkali ion exchange treatment and has a higher surface pencil hardness of up to 9H. Such glass, however, has poor flexibility and workability, is to be produced and processed not by a roll-to-roll process, but by a sheet-to-sheet process. This leads to high production cost.